BCCI fails to get media contracts on time, extends Star India's contract by 15 days

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been under constant pressure of the administrators and the outsiders in the recent times. Time and again, the powerful Indian cricket board has been accused of not functioning properly. And now, in a recent update, another major blip from the board has put them in an awkward position.

The BCCI were forced to extend their media rights contract for Star India by 15 days. The extension period will now go on till April 15. The same was done in order to cover up for the board’s failure to complete the media rights tender process in a timely manner to ensure live broadcast of Indian women’s home series against England.

England Women are currently in India to participate in limited overs fixture, that would also include Australia. As per the reports in InsideSport, the existing media rights contracts of the Star India was only till March 31. On February 20, the BCCI had invited bids for the new media rights. However, they had chosen an e-auction to be the methodology for bids selection.

This ended up being a discomfort for the bidders. Hence, the auction date was further pushed to April 3. Now, with this extension in the tender process, the implications are clear – there won’t be any broadcaster to cover Indian women’s thee-match home series against England which is slated to take place in Nagpur on April 8, April 11, and April 14.

“If we hadn’t persuaded Star to remain on Board, this series wouldn’t have been telecast as we’d have been without an official telecaster due to delay in the process to sell our media rights,” Times of India quoted an official as saying.

Officials unhappy with blips

Meanwhile, another senior BCCI officer has questioned the functioning of the BCCI and also the CoA. He remarked that such things have become a common issue for the board in the recent times.

“This is the way you run cricket world’s biggest board and country’s biggest sports’ governing body. There are repeated failures. You (the CoA) could not anticipate the hazards to conduct an e-auction in a timely manner, and when postponing the auction by a week you did not take the women’s series into consideration. This only reflects that either you are incompetent to be in those lucrative offices, or you are convinced to get away by doing anything,” the official told insidesport.co.

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